Description

Over the colonial period, Indian leaders and the literati were impelled to contest colonialist views of Hindu effeminacy. In the process, Hindu asceticism became, I argue, a critical site for the performance of masculinity. In this talk, I will offer a discursive history of the reconfigurations of Hindu asceticism in Indian nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries directing attention to select symptomatic moments in Indian nationalist history—anticolonialism, swadeshi nationalism, gandhian nationalism, and the rise of the Hindu Right. It will illuminate the misappropriations and manipulations of past histories, texts and icons by the contemporary Hindu Right and, in addition, reveal how the tension between asceticism and nationalist politics continues to haunt the Indian present.

Chandrima Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada. Her areas of research are postcolonialism, masculinity studies and nationalist politics, with a focus on South Asia. She has recently published a book, Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India (2011).